Āytam
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Āytam is a special sound in the Tamil Language. It is represented in the Tamil script by the character ஃ. It is special in the senses of not being an independent sound and being archaic and employed only in idiomatic and fossilized words such as அஃது, இஃது etc.[clarification needed]
The sound āytam is mentioned in the earliest available Tamil grammatical treatise Tolkāppiyam (1:1:2) where it is categorized as an allophone (or cārpezuttu "Dependent Sound"). As stated by Krishnamurti (Krishnamurti:2003 p154 [1] ) "The properties of āytam, as described by Tolkāppiyam, were: (1) it occurred after a short vowel and before a stop (voiceless), and its place of articulation is like that of the stop. In other words, ... assimilates to the following voiceless stop".
[edit] See also
- Tamil language
- Asterism (⁂)
- Therefore sign (∴)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. pp. 140. ISBN 0-521-77111-0.
